The Auricles
by Annie Christ
Summary: Maybe it was a mid-2000s 'goth stage' gone embarrassingly wrong, maybe it was a backwoods rendition of fate or maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, Axel never wanted to be murdered by the hand of his best friend in the name of occultist curiosity. From the perspective of the not-so-undead, Axel can't seem to put his broomstick past behind him.
1. The Hanged Man

Forewarning: This story is a dark comedy that pokes fun at a lot of sensitive topics and purposely trivializes them (but with consequence). It deals with suicidal symbolism, morbidity and eventual gruesome imagery. I cannot stress this more and refuse to be held accountable for anyone who doesn't take this warning into account before reading. There's also a sense of an unhealthy relationship that is not glorified, but the driving focus of the story. Finally, I'm building my own world here, so some of the spells mentioned and laws of magic have been tugged out of my ass and don't hold a candle to the grimoires on my shelf. The title is also a play on words.

That said, I'm so excited for this story and shout out to everyone who's contributed to it. As in, thank you for letting me blast you with Skype messages and keep you up until 7 AM discussing plot points.

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**Chapter One: The Hanged Man**

I took the first train out of Providence, Rhode Island to Cape Bitterneck, North Carolina on a sleeting Thursday morning. It was the beginning of my junior year's second semester, and the last time I'd soaked in the jaded ocean air of my coastal hometown I'd been eighteen-years-old and standing on a precipice of self-importance. Home rang through me as if I were forever a bat in its belfry; always in my accent, always in my palate, always reverberating through my chest with repetitive palpitations of sweet tea and biscuits and gravy. No matter where I went I found myself romancing the idea that was my southern disposition gospel, because in the words of Dorothy 'there's no place like home,' and in the words of myself 'there's no place like the south.' It's truly a breed of it's own with a defined calling that can make one believe all roads lead back there.

For three hours I was given a chance to reexamine that calling with my spine pressed against the high back of an Amtrak chair resembling a sweater someone on Full House would've worn. It was ugly, but I wasn't much better. Not only that, but I was too busy to give much of a shit about public transportation aesthetics while reminiscing on the one time my best friend killed me. I didn't stutter. I'm actually a culmination of teenage boredom, southern lore and a 'Goth Stage' that went so embarrassingly wrong I can't even make an excuse for myself except 'dumb.' I was stupid and so was aforementioned best friend who was the one who came up with the idea knowing full well I'd be the one who'd want to execute it _just because_.

Saix—oh, Saix; a friend through every end down to the most literal finale. You know, I don't have much of an excuse for what we were thinking at fifteen-years-old, but I do know that we were bored and we might've never owned a pair of Tripp pants, but that was only because we weren't within walking distance of a mall. And maybe we just weren't _that_ intense about our self-expression. Either way, everyone in Bitterneck bought a yearbook that references back to both how hideous we were and how caught up in the idea of the occult we'd become. It'd originally started small. Saix read for the sake of 'objective interest' while I was the asshole in the background looming over his shoulder whispering 'but what if?' Always prodding, twisting his arm and salivating over the idea of _real magic _while carting around our copies of highlighted and overly loved _Grimorium Verum_ as if it were real.

"Honey, do you want some lavender candy?"

Lavender candy has nothing to do with my childhood but the eighty-seven-year-old women who'd sat down beside me on the train. She smelled like a nursing home aka a bag of rot masked by Moonlight Musk, and her aura immediately made me nauseous. The lady was dying from atypical natural causes, and though I took the purple candy with its soft center and floral accents, it turned my tongue to ash the second I popped it into my mouth. Smiling, I thanked her for her disgusting piece of sugar, told her about the weather in North Carolina and promised her that _someday_ I'd cut off all my obnoxious hair and become an upstanding member of society. That calmed her, but her smell was still fucking God-awful.

_Anyway_, so, Saix killed me. Granted, it was somewhat with my permission, so maybe it was actually assisted suicide and I'm incapable of taking responsibility for my own actions. Probably a little bit of both depending on the jury. We'll just say he killed me so that I can keep my bias. It could've been him, though. We decided on who'd die based on a best two out of three game of Rock, Paper, Scissors while standing in front of a noose hanging from dilapidated barn rafters I'd figured out how to tie via the Internet's instruction. Our motive was to see if we could bring a human being back to life, and there was no safer way to execute said motive than using one another to gain the glory. It made sense to us at the time, I'm assuming.

So, why the hell would we risk our young lives, right? When youth is at its ripest and most important no matter how Donnie Darko you think you've become? Well, I mean, because we were pretty damn sure we could come back without any repercussions. In hindsight, we loved living even if we sucked at doing it in terms of the teenage hierarchy.

Saix had started out killing tadpoles beside the creek with his mother's sewing needles and he'd whisper a song he'd taught himself. That's the funny thing about spells. There's hardly any law to how you're supposed to create them. I vaguely remember the lyrics to his because mine was entirely different with a mocking tone that contrasted harshly with his whispery enigmatic melody. Because he was so talented, the tadpoles instantaneously sprang to life and swam away as if nothing happened, and so began his journey onto bigger and better things such as frogs, cats, dogs, cows and then one time I watched from a fence as he gracefully killed off a horse and brought it back to life as if it were a seamless transition. Sure, there wasn't anything particularly _humane_ about it, but I'm not here to tell you we'd been raised to see animals as equal partners on our not-so-free to roam planet Earth. At the time, we had no concept of the Earth's laws or what we were digging our baby fingers into. From a distance it looked like clear water, but when we lifted our hands the underneath of our nails were full of blackened clay and the fish that passed were floating belly-up. Our grimoires could've used stronger disclaimers, but who _really_ reads the preface?

It wasn't until Saix no longer needed the song to bring back half a herd of red heifers did he fleetingly mention to me that he could probably reanimate _human_s. I'd gotten my hopes up about my parents, but he must've seen because he'd corrected himself with 'newly dead' faster than I could manage to get the suggestion out. He confirmed I was tied down to my grandma for the rest of her life. No big deal, but Saix had opened a door for my inability to not suggest the most dangerous pathway for us to journey down together. He'd set me up to suggest it just so that he could turn the tables of blame if things went wrong enough, and in the back of my mind I knew I was the manipulated enabler, but it was always fun.

Fun until I stepped up onto the stacked crates and brought the noose around my neck and just stood there for thirty straight seconds, that is. On that stupidly fateful night, Saix stood beneath me as if he were judgmentally determining my passage over the Styx. All at once it'd occurred to me that my entire life was in his palm, and if something went wrong, then it was _over_. We'd played with death as if it were a trinket brought home from a family holiday, but there was no thorough understanding of the soul, body and how it interconnected everything down to our most basic personality traits. In short, it took me ten seconds to terrify myself into chickening out. Nothing could prepare me for that kind of risk taking.

**Memento Mori I.**

"_Are you going to do it? Or are you just going to model for me with that around your neck?" _

_ My fingertips held tight to the scratchy rope, white knuckling and becoming more ghostly with every passing second. "Could you give me, like, a minute to summon my nerve? You're not the one about to fucking die here, alright? What if the Other Side is fucked up and you can't bring me back to life because _human_? Have fun hiding my body, asshole."_

_ "It's like skydiving. You can't wait. You'll never do it." He wasn't there to calm my nerves, but to get it over with as quickly as possible before we were caught. "Axel, just do it. If you die there are plenty of sinkholes to toss you in, but thanks for worrying."_

_ I swallowed, stared into his eyes that were sharper than flint and wondered why his compassion had vanished at a time like this. He had empathy, really, but not right then. The way his lips forcibly turned downward made it seem like he was afraid to be kind. Knowing how much he internalized, Saix was probably also close to being a scabby flake. He simply had the nerve to refrain from showing it to me._

_After a hot minute of flickering my gaze between him and the candles I finally shook my head. "Man, I can't do it. There's no way."_

_ "Fine, then _I'll_ do it."_

_ Thinking he meant he'd kill himself and I could be the one to try and bring him back, I exhaled in relief and began loosening the noose pressing against my Adam's Apple with trembling fingers sapped of their motor skills. Saix strode toward me, and I was naïve enough to believe he wanted to help me down from the several foot high crate mountain we'd built together. The fall needed be high enough to immediately break whoever's neck, and we'd opted for something relatively painless and fast._

_ "You stand up here and tell me this isn't the most unnerving bullshit you've ever experienced. Wait, Saix. What're you—"_

_Before I could scream at him and take hold of the rope above my head, my eyes widened as they harnessed the sight of him throwing his leg toward the stacked wooden crates beneath my booted feet. They gave out, I dropped, my occipital adopted a stinging burn that tore upward from the top of my spine on into the central core of my skull, and as quickly as I'd fallen, I died._

Or at least, I instantaneously lost consciousness. It was probably twenty minutes before I _officially_ died, and Saix already knew better than to touch me until he was certain there was nothing left but a shell of 'what had been.' If this tells you anything about death, then I don't recall any of 'me being dead.' There were waves of coldness as if I'd been laid out on the winter coast's shore for the tide to roll over like an indecisive blanket, but aside from that, it was like someone had put me to bed in a space borne nursery.

I didn't wake up again until the next morning. Saix's ear was pressed against my left pectoral and he was singing his song beneath his breath at a chillingly fast pace. It had become a harrowing chant, and my rebirth was punctuated by his evidently desperate whispers. Immediately, I inhaled with all my might and the flame of neglect had charred my throat. We were still in the barn, and the dust motes were swimming through streams of citrus sunlight that pierced the pane-less windows. All that I could do for the first three minutes was cough and try to move, but everything was coagulated and taking longer than expected. In the recesses of my mind I knew I wasn't all there, but I was just happy to be breathing. The way Saix had withdrawn implied he was relieved, too.

**Memento Mori II.**

"_"What took so long?" Even if he'd left me to die I doubt I would've ever known, but knowing it hadn't been an instantaneous reanimation was unnerving. "It's morning…"_

_"What?" Saix glanced out the window and he was smoothing his hands over the thighs of his black cigarette pants. "Nothing. That was surprisingly easy. You were just taking forever to start back up. You're so fucking lazy about everything. It was getting kind of annoying."_

That was the end of that discussion, and we sort of went on with our lives afterward. The side effects of being the technical undead proved to be more adverse than either Saix or I had predicted. Between sometimes having no heartbeat at all and realizing Saix had gained an upper-hand over me via the reanimation, it became clear I wasn't half as invested in the craft we'd devoted so much of our time to. I withdrew, Saix pursued the realm entirely and before long we were seniors in high school and hardly on speaking terms. It sounds like a natural progression of young friendship, but the problem really ties into how, when someone brings you back to life, you can't just _forget _him. This comes full circle as to why I was on my way back to Cape Bitterneck and putting my schooling on an indefinite hiatus. I'd felt the southern calling, you see? The calling of Saix.

The man couldn't pick up a fucking phone or anything. No, he was too good for that. Instead, for about three months, he'd been sending me ambiguous messages pertaining to wanting me to come home. The very first incident happened outside of my student apartment building while I was leaving for breakfast. I'd been in the middle of locking my door only to turn around and find myself staring at a black-cloaked figure waiting across the courtyard. After growing up around the 'weird' it's easy to ignore things, so I did myself the favor of walking past the ethereal figure and heading to the cafeteria. After that, there were repetitive nightmares about mannequins awkwardly walking into my room with their uncertain joints leading the way toward my bed and me drowning in the ocean outside Saix's house, but the final straw was when I woke up levitating three feet above my mattress only to fall as soon as my roommate opened the door. I could handle privately being miserable, but he was on the brink of eradicating an identity I'd manufactured through miserably hard work. So, I listened and obeyed, because my grownup witchy wardrobe could only ever be _fashionable,_ not _real_.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when I finally stepped off the train with two black suitcases and a leather jacket accented by a 'The Lovers' patch from the Major Arcana that took up the majority of the jacket's backspace. Rolling my head to the side, I stared out at the ocean that was as salty as ever about having to face winter. I sympathized and scrunched my nose at the briny ocean air. The scent flooded me with memories that threatened to capitalize on my mood. Childhood wasn't going to let me run away forever, and that was growing more and more evident the harder I tried to choke it out of my life. No place like home, right?

Whether or not Saix was expecting me hardly mattered, but considering I'd managed to nap peacefully and the Grandma Candy was starting to taste sweet again implied he was letting up on me. On some grand scheme, I was fully aware our relationship wasn't built on a healthy foundation, but idealism hardly mirrored realism. Somehow it could've been much worse. _Somehow_, being the keyword there. But I wasn't in the mood to psychoanalyze how fucking miserable I was. Instead, I spent the moment appreciating murky dunes where daring couples walked dogs and discussed the future. Finally, I was somewhere where I could drink a concoction of 80% sweet syrup with 20% leaf water without being referred to as gross and cook all of my food in bacon grease without being handed condescending nutritional pamphlets about how I was basically setting myself up to _die_.

Stepping down a short flight of creaky wooden stairs with my black Beatle boots creating rhythmic smacks, I already knew I had one hell of a walk to Saix's house. His historical family home had been planted on the beachside during some colonization I couldn't recall, but his house was more than likely built from segments of shipwrecks. It was a looming white vessel with a mock lighthouse tower and the sea salt air had eaten at its siding for decades. The only thing that remained remotely new looking were the black shutters. Anything else was beaten to death by corrosion. Granted, that was the entire damn town. Bitterneck always looked as if it were one more funeral away from absolute abandonment even though it technically thrived on people who found the decay charming. I hated it, really. There was nothing amiable about a town that embodied the word 'shanty.'

High grass and the faint impression of car wheels surrounded the pathway that lead to Saix's house, and I dragged ass knowing full well I was obligated to say 'hello' to my grandmother who apparently cheated death. Not today, though. I was focused on settling into the Gibbous House for the night and catching up with my 'old friend.' I wasn't surprised so much as I was annoyed when I stumbled across a newly built white fence with a definitive 'No Trespassing' sign nailed into the padlocked door. Figuring I was the exception, I climbed over with the kind struggle no one thankfully witnessed. There were some peculiarities to Saix's house that made it an unofficial tourist attraction, and the fence was overdue by about a decade and a half.

And then there it was. Seated within high and very dead brush was the monstrous house I'd spent so many years playing in front of. It drank up my attention without any kind of apology and struggled to let light shed on any other asset the scenery had to offer. From my hundred-foot distance, the stubborn front porch swing's creaking greeted me with defined shrillness. Icy wind that'd rubbed my nose raw five minutes into walking swayed its chains, and I knew I wasn't ready for this reunion. Already, snot was dripping from my repeatedly broken nose, and I couldn't handle the travesty my hair was going to become after being exposed to the sea air for more than one day.

Three motionless figures stood on the front porch. They were bundled and pointing at the ocean as if it was under fire in the courtroom. Some things really never changed. Ignoring them, I dragged my luggage toward the ornate double doors with lunar phases carved into their front panels and brass doorknockers ready for an overdue death. As soon as I reached up to slam the green knocker down against its chipped indention, the door creaked open and my dry laughter followed. If there was one thing Saix had managed to refine over the past several years, then it was being absolutely terrifying.

"You know, it would've been cool if you'd met me at the station!" The overstuffed house grasped onto my words and suffocated them so that they wouldn't echo. "Some Welcoming Committee, Saix. I'm already feeling the warmth and everything, you chilly son of a bitch. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. You're _kidding me_."

I wasn't alone. More of those lifeless figures were seated beyond the foyer in a den that looked better suited for 1890s entertaining. Catching my breath after the short unnerving scare, the crystal chandelier above my head softly swayed as if someone were walking overhead, and I forgot my bags in the grand entrance where a single winding staircase sat like an obnoxious ornament. My hard-soled shoes created the only sound in the entire house. I had to wonder if maybe the dusty hellhole had been abandoned for good.

"And so he finally shows his face, three years later."

I'm also one for wishful thinking.

Saix's voice rang in my ears as if he'd morphed my skull into an amphitheater, and its soothingly dark properties dissolved on my tongue like a cup of earthy Earl Grey. Swallowing air in preparation to face him, I turned on my elevated heel and spotted him standing in the wide doorway of his kitchen. Taller with an infallible correctness to his posture, he'd grown his hair out past his shoulders and was dressed in black layers that were artfully untidy. They added a sinister element of whimsy to his whole 'warlock' presence. Saix played his part well, but I would've sounded like a fucker if I'd said he didn't look _good_ for a regular hermit.

"How's college?" And he was mocking me, but not enough to piss me off. I actually smiled with a necessary eye roll. "You're grandmother told me you're a _smart boy_."

"Don't sound so surprised." I hardly paid attention to the suitcases that floated past me and on toward whatever room he'd picked out for my stay. "You weren't the only one who read when we were kids. How's the craft? I've had no choice but to see how advanced you've become. You've sort of been a regular pain in my ass, lately."

"Oh, _that_?" He smoothly articulated each word as if he'd practiced from a script. Saix pushed away from the doorframe and headed into the kitchen while rolling a wrist. "Sorry, but I guess not _really_ since I have no regrets that you're here right now."

Deciding that was my invitation, I followed after him and noted the trinkets his mother had once collected during her traveling. The black wood-burning stove was reprogrammed to run on gas, but it was still the ancient centerpiece of the room. That and the starkly contrasting white farmhouse sink spotlessly shimmering beneath a window overlooking the ocean. On a long wooden table there sat a box of crackers I didn't think twice about grabbing and shoving my fingers into, but it was jerked out of my hand by an invisible force and replaced by a new box that'd been inside the cupboard.

"They were kind of stale," Saix explained.

"Right." I knew deep down I would've eaten them either way. I was in college and free food was free food. If the food poisoning would be mild, then I'd cut my losses and let myself feel full for an hour in exchange for shitting my organs out all night. "Are you working or is it kind of the same ole same ole?"

Saix shoved a kettle onto the stove. It was hard to believe we were the same age considering his habits rang true to an eighty-year-old driven by formalities and I was effortlessly dropping crumbs on my shirt, trying to decipher his motives. The kitchen was buttery and bright in contrast to the rest of his house, but there was an impossible coolness that hung heavy with aquamarine hues and dark woods that consistently filtered in and out of the Gibbous abode's break neck halls.

"Sort of," he murmured and left the black kettle to gain heat. "I've been busy with research over the past couple of years. Spent a few months in Europe."

So much for _hermit_.

"You spent a few months in Europe, and here I thought I was the world traveler because I went to Rhode Island." When I said it out loud it sounded pretty lame. "What was in Europe other than everything except what's here?"

"Nothing I was looking for." Saix pressed the small of his back against the edge of the counter and we mulled over one another for a minute. "I can tell you don't practice anymore. There's nothing remotely impressive about you, except for how dead you smell."

"_Wow_." He was right, though. What a piece of shit. "I thought we came to a mutual understanding that it was pretty warranted what with the whole dying trauma and whatever."

"As if it was traumatic. You were dead the entire time."

"Don't make me say '_wow_' again. I've been here for ten minutes and already want to leave." My boots scuffed along the hardwood flooring. Suddenly turning to examine his shelf of suspiciously rare spices that screamed 'apothecary,' I almost bumped into a figurine, again. There were two seated at the table, too. Even though it'd been years, I was still so accustomed to their company it hardly felt as if we weren't alone. "But what's the urgent business? I'd kind of like to know _why_ I'm here against my will."

"You came willingly," he said, cool and collected without any apparent sense of guilt.

"Says the man who harassed me to pay attention to him. There are laws against that." I paused and slowly chewed until my mouth grew pasty. "I could press charges."

"The United States legal system isn't going to protect you from my energy. It'd stick you into a padded room so that you could be protected from yourself. What're you going to tell them? You were brought back from the dead as a teenager and now your ex-best friend is haunting you in order to swindle you into doing his bidding? You'd sound so… _insane_."

"Are you threatening me?" I couldn't have sounded duller. The corner of my mouth quirking soon followed. "Don't pussyfoot, Saix. You know I hate that."

"Coming from you that's almost _droll_ considering you're the worst offender I know." The bitterness in his tone could've given me frostbite, but it lightened as he continued. "I need to utilize you for research. That's all. Nothing more than that."

"That's not all, you liar." Pushing him for information wasn't going to get me anywhere when he was quickly building a wall of ambiguity. This discussion was happening too fast and too rudely for him to even want to bother. I could've choked him for inconveniencing me to such an extreme. He'd put my life on hold. "Fuck you."

That last string of cursing came out sulky. Whether he noticed was lost to the kettle screaming to be removed from its burner. Soon we were seated at the breakfast nook directly alongside a set of curved bay windows that bled in enough light to make even the darkest tea glow golden in Saix's cups. Watching with a bored expression as I allowed my spoon to stir itself (some of the only magic I still indulged in), Saix eyed me with a hardened sea foam stare generously speckled with golden flakes I hardly remembered. I'd suppressed some of Saix like a bad memory for the sake of a fresh start into normalcy. So much for that, I guess.

"How long are you going to need me here?" My words came out with a hollow aftertaste I washed down with a sip. "I'd like to get a degree someday."

"I'll cut you free once we're done."

That wasn't an answer, and it was an easier way to say he had no idea. Whatever was troubling him had etched itself into his expression because, when he wasn't speaking, he was wearing a somber mask that matched my practiced listlessness. Had it not been early on in the semester, I would've lost my cool. Maybe finally unhinged myself. I still had time to drop all of my classes and regain most of my tuition, so there was less pressure. That was still going to be a disgusting phone call considering everything I'd done for a full ride. Home was an obligation, though. I could keep running, but until Saix died, he wasn't leaving me be.

A piece I distinctly recalled as something by Chopin drifted from the music room Saix never utilized, and I arched one of my eyebrows. Saix caught my silent question and shrugged as he handed me a plate loaded with bite-sized pastries. He was so proper and polite it made me want to eat my tongue.

"The mannequins like to play when they get bored."

"Thanks for telling me. Might've thought it was something weird." I could've crucified him with sarcasm. "I'll try to remember next time I'm unnerved."

It wasn't surprising we didn't have much to say to one another, but there was a quality of litheness between us while we were seated close. My blood circulated easier and the creaks and groans my joints were accustomed to fighting slackened. Maybe that was why I couldn't make myself run my mouth. I was too busy savoring the gelatinous behavior my spine was starting to take on. It was uniquely normal and reminded me of middle school.

Teacups were drained and the conversation grew even more overwrought. It was hard to believe we'd once been people who were in tune with each other in the way that, when we were around one another, my ribs threatened to blossom open because it was _Saix_. As kids he'd been a kind of all consuming obsession where two days apart was a feat. Now I saw him with a strange sort of disenchanted affection more along the lines of onus. Adulthood was a hollowing experience. That was for certain.

"You should look around." Saix knew how to break the ice double-time. "I have to make a phone call. It could be a while."

"Yeah, which room did you stick me in?"

My palms flattened on the tabletop as I pushed myself up and away from his personal space. Taking a biscuit with me, I sluggishly dragged toward the spiraling staircase that had always made me sick to look. The wall adjacent to the steps was crammed tight with black frames containing portraits of the dead, Saix and his mother and even me in all my doofus glory. I began humming the Rosemary's Baby theme as I ascended to a new level of my own personal hell and cracked a smile in spite of myself.

As soon as my foot touched the landing, an upstairs door slammed shut with an oxidizing echo. Inhaling as I peaked around the corner with a prepared lean, I spotted someone beckoning me to continue onward. Far down the hallway, a mannequin stood. She was leaned out of a guestroom doorway with the kind of posing that led me to believe I'd been expected from the moment Saix said 'phone call.' One of her long slender fingers pointed to the doorway opposite to hers, and I nodded knowingly. That was my room.

I uttered a mocking 'thanks' with intended weakness, but it echoed alongside me as I shuffled toward my assigned living space. Really, I was too dead for this. To be surrounded by inanimate objects projecting lifelike traits was setting off my Uncanny Valley and making my stomach churn the tea and dainty-ass food I'd stuffed down my throat by the handfuls. Had it been my way, then I would've burnt all the mannequins as soon as I'd inherited them. They'd originally been Saix's mothers, and they were my least favorite childhood memory.

Shutting the door behind me once inside the room, it wasn't until I sat down on the creaky twin mattress with its moth-eaten duvet did I realize I'd been rubbing my molars together until they threatened to turn to dust. My jaw ached, my head ached, and the longer I sat there the more I realized the throbbing along my back was returning. Blinking through a tired stare, from where I sat the sole window in the room cast shadows over my eyes. I couldn't see the ocean, but there was a nice picturesque view of Cape Bitterneck.

All there was to the room was an cedar wood desk in need of sanding and staining, one small closet already full of lesser antiques, a dresser with mothballs that rolled when its drawers were tugged open and the modest bed I'd be calling my own. 'Musky' summed the room up, which was why I took a chance and pried open the window so that it could air out as I unpacked everything I'd crammed into my hefty luggage. For a split-second, I leaned out the window to take in fresh air, but I almost toppled out when I noticed the cloaked figure from my college dorm looming along the border of the forest behind Saix's house.

Fresh air suddenly wasn't that appealing anymore, and I slammed the window shut with a grunt only to turn the lock and make sure the one on my door functioned. The doorknob wiggled when latched, but not enough to imply someone could easily break in. Had I not opened the door and noticed the mannequin was no longer leaned out but seated in her desk chair, then I would've stayed inside until Saix made me eat, but again with the Uncanny Valley and the uncanny bullshit that was everything about the Gibbous House.

**Memento Mori III.**

"_Witches aren't real." Grasping onto a splintery trunk lid, I tossed up the waterlogged cap and peaked into its dusty interior where once maroon, then pink, family albums sat stacked. "Your mom said that so you'd leave her alone and maybe clean the attic. Mom's are always full of ulterior motives."_

"_I have every reason to believe she's telling the truth." _

_The Gibbous attic sprawled out endlessly and reminded me of something I'd seen in the Flowers in the Attic movie Grandma watched maybe once a week. Resounding darkness enclosed the both of us while our hands dug through the trunks from generations upon generations and every now and again the skittering of a displaced animal forced me to uncomfortably shift. There was only the sunlight from dust-caked windows and our flashlights that went out if suddenly plopped down to guide us._

"_Is she going to make me drink tea again?" Their family traditions were beyond my thirteen-year-old comprehension, at the time. Eventually, I wouldn't think twice about their archaic habits. "I didn't even know people in the United States still did shit like that. So fancy…"_

_Saix knocked over a yellowed dress form, and out of habit, profusely apologized as he set the female torso upright. Had it been anyone else, then I would've laughed, but it was Saix inside his house. Within the first week I'd been desensitized to most of it._

_My hands dug through the photo albums and flipped through sticky pages full of black and white photos that'd been dislodged from their once pasted places. They gathered in heaps and stuck together and curiosity quickly placed me on my ass so that I could sort through them. As I stacked and organized image after image of surprisingly clear photographs, I found myself turning them over to inspect the dates with a thoughtful frown. All of the dates for that particularly album circulated through the years 1876-1879, and there was something unnerving about each one of them. _

"_Do you know about any of your ancestors?" _

_Saix stepped out from behind an armoire and the cobwebs in his hair comically swayed. Noticing what was in my hands, he dropped what he was doing to sit down beside me, and as soon as he did, he began clicking his tongue at me as if I'd stumbled across something mildly forbidden. I side-eyed him while he flipped through the pictures; waiting for whatever knowledgeable output he was dying to feed me. He was a perpetual smartass. _

"_You know what these are, right?" He paused and stared hard at an image of a mother and her sleeping baby. "Or are you that desensitized?"_

"_Really stiff family portraits?" They were making me uncomfortable the longer we stared at each one, and the lump in my throat began to swell. "I don't know."_

"_Post-mortem photography, loser."  
_

_Dropping the stack, I shook out my hands for a moment in reactionary repulsion. Saix rolled his eyes and scooped them back up to also begin staring down the dates of each picture. Before long we were seated with all of the albums dug out, flipping through the years of life and death in utter complete fascination. My mouth was drying and tea suddenly sounded incredible, but we still had a while before his mom would come calling._

"_But they're standing. How did they manage to make them _stand_ if they're dead?" Saix handed me a new album with living people to soothe my nerves. "What's the point?"_

_He hardly seemed half as uncomfortable as I was. "There were specific stands made for that. It was sort of a trend. Like those shoes you're wearing, but more fashionable."_

_I let that go. "Could you imagine what it'd be like if this was your job?"_

_ "Boring, probably. The dead are boring."_

_ The book with the living wasn't as enchanting, but significantly less mind numbing in terms of self-preservation. The only thing off-putting was how it contained images of some of the people I'd seen dead in the first book. Flipping one of the images over out of sudden habit and wonder, I paused and reached over for the post-mortem book Saix was still admiring without any sense of abandon. He went to yell at me but I shushed him with a pointblank 'shut up.'_

_ "Why does this picture say 1881?"_

_He tried to tug it back. "Because it was taken in 1881."_

_ "But this…" And I found the matching image of the same person who was clearly lifeless and held it up to show him. "Was taken three years before."_

Dinner with Saix was discomforting, aside from the talk about small town politics, but breakfast was even worse. Maybe the salmon en croûte Saix made for dinner and affectionately stuffed down my throat because 'you've lost weight' didn't sit well with me. I say so because a majority of the night was plagued with sweat-inducing nightmares. Over and over again I dreamt about myself taking a running leap off the edge of a bluff that dropped down to jagged ocean rocks only to feel an invisible force clasp onto my neck and jerk me back until my spine severed. It was like dying over and over again.

After dying for the fifth time, I sat upright with a harsh jolt and the cool air that smacked against my sweat-soaked back forced me to shiver. That wasn't why I screamed in complete rage, though. The birds were singing and the seagulls were in full swing, but the only charming thing I could pay attention to were the four mannequins looming alongside my bed, expectantly waiting for me to wake up. The goose bumps that bristled along my biceps were unpreventable because their blank stares were so direct. Grumbling under my breath, I snatched up my phone to check the time. It was only eight in the morning, and I had a feeling Saix had tormented me into waking up. How dare he try anything mildly conventional? Eccentric-ass poofter.

My next words tore out. "Saix! _Come on_!"

One cold shower later, I reappeared in my bedroom and the mannequins were gone. Saix didn't deserve my decency, which was why I jogged down the steps in sweats and a hoodie that were reserved for my Monday morning classes. The semester before I was pretty sure no one in History 112 had seen me in a different outfit from October on until winter break. But someone did eventually point out the Sigil of Lucifer on my sweater. I poked fun at myself for the sake of survival. I might've never been for Anton LaVey's ass-patting, but he'd made a good point when he said there was nothing more annoying than a stupid person and someone interested in the occult with no sense of humor.

"Good morning, Sunshine!" My cheer was completely forced. "Hope you slept as well as I did! Nothing says _rest_ like endless nightmares about killing yourself over and over again!"

Saix had become his mother. When we were younger, after ugly sleeping in Saix's wide queen-sized bed, we'd stumble downstairs into the kitchen and always find her sleepily smoking the first cigarette of the day with her hand-painted coffee mug steaming in front of her. Her healthy black hair and fierce straight across bangs looked as if she never laid them down on a pillow, but what always made her so memorable were the eccentric robes she owned and wore for the first half of the day. Always some silvery or midnight blue silk lined with esoteric symbolism that cascaded into heaps on the floor.

And there was Saix doing the exact same thing with an expression replicated through possibly only genetics, but more than likely a combination of that and learned behavior. He was regal in black and silver that morning, but I couldn't even bring myself to appreciate how he looked due to the three other mannequins sitting with him at the table.

"Saix, you're a fucking parody of yourself."

Had I been smart, then I would've decided to leave right after breakfast, but my morbid fascination with our lives made me approach the French press and then take a seat across from him. The silence lingered on until it became apparent something was wrong. Needing context clues, my eyes drifted around the tabletop, but all I could see was breakfast food he'd set out, which was surprisingly nice of him, a balled up napkin stained with blood and… there it was. So, maybe it was a little too obvious and I was still dense as ever.

Before he could claw my hand away, I snatched up the napkin. As I spoke, I smoothed it out and began half-assed reading his blood stains like an oracle. "Either you bit your tongue or you're sick and about to tell me exactly what the hell's going on."

"I'd call you perceptive, but it's obvious." On cue, he snatched the napkin from my hand, and all at once blood gargled in his throat and he gagged. His coughing fit lasted long enough for me to stand up and get him a glass of water. His eyes began to water, and it was then I realized the mass amount of clothing he wore wasn't just to keep him warm, but to mask how thin he'd become. "And to think the symptoms have lessened since you've been here. By more than half."

"You need to start talking." That wasn't a request. It was a command. "Open your fucking mouth and tell me what's going on or I'll force it out. Remember how you used to make me eat sand? I'll channel that buried rage."

He narrowed his eyes, not pleased with me taking the reigns, but he must've been about to explain himself. There was no fight on his part, but he made sure I had my food together before he continued speaking. Even though I didn't show it to him, I was vaguely concerned about his wellbeing; more out of habit than anything. Knowing he was coughing up blood forced my heart to beat faster than it had in years. Not since I'd told him I no longer wanted to be friends with him. The same sense of potential loss was overbearing, and it was easier to pretend I didn't care at all what happened to him than sit and watch.

"I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you."

His disclaimer fell on deaf ears as I doused my sausage links in blueberry syrup. "Glucose is bad for you, anyway."

"What do you remember about the time between when you died and when you woke back up the morning after?"

"We've rehashed this about twenty times. I told you death is just a blank boring slate and that I probably wasn't even fully dead since there was so much nothingness." Taking a bite, I stabbed my fork in his direction and crinkled my pierced nose. "I haven't stumbled across any repressed memories either, so you might as well just get on with your point."

"I didn't bring you back with my song."

I stopped eating and our eyes locked for an extended period of time. "_Saix_—"

"The spell wasn't bringing you back. I tried for three hours in that barn, and I really thought you were dead for good. There even came a point where I stopped trying magic and went into basic CPR in hopes it'd do _something_. You were _very_ dead, Axel. Human bodies don't become cold while they're blacked out, I promise. Not only that, but for some reason, maybe the magic was backfiring, you were going into rigor mortis twice as fast as the average human body is supposed to. I didn't have a choice."

By then, my fork had drifted back to my plate. "_What _did you _do_?"

"What anyone else would have done in the moment." He picked up his mug of coffee and spoke along the rim with an unapologetic stare. "The Commutare Corde Pact, but less refined because that was too intermediate of black magic for a fifteen-year-old to execute properly. I did something _like_ it."

Let me explain exactly what Saix meant. There are certain spells that are completely out of the realm of junior warlock ability. Bringing back dead animals was already sort of impressively advanced for someone who'd only been rigorously practicing for approximately three years, maybe less. Bringing back human beings and thinking it would be a breeze had been us exploiting our lack of education and the kind of nurturing an elder witch or warlock should've instated. For so long I'd been frightened by Saix because I'd thought he was capable of reanimating people with sheer energy.

The Commutare Corde Pact is poorly scrambled Latin for 'to exchange a heart' or something along those lines. When a loved one dies people rightfully become desperate and willing to do whatever it takes to bring the dead back to life. Aforementioned pact is one of those ancient taboos that makes it _possible_ for advanced warlocks and witches to reanimate the dead, but it's rarely executed because of the mass amount of self-sacrifice that comes along with it. The one who initiates the pact has to give up a chunk of their heart for the deceased individual. Whether or not it's in a metaphorical sense is up for grabs, but either way, it takes a lot out of the initiator both in body and mind. The real kicker is how the two involved in the pact are bound together to an extreme. Both can only live as long as their pact partner, which is why people _don't_ do it. It's hardly worth the loss of identity.

"We _never_ agreed to that before." My hands were trembling, and I hid them underneath the table. "How did you accomplish that when back then you couldn't even levitate boiling pots of water without bitching?"

"When a mother's child is trapped under a turned over car why is she able to lift the vehicle when, on any other day, she can't open a sealed jar of pickles?" Saix finished wiping the blood from his lips and leaned back. "While you're able to pretend you never died and that you're a part of a subculture and not an entirely different plain of existence, I cannot. The longer we're a great distance apart, the weaker I become. I'm a fair man. I have no interest in keeping someone around who views my relationship with him as a hindrance. In fact, when I said I didn't regret your presence I solely meant I didn't regret how having the other part of my heart close reinstates my vitality. We're hardly acquaintances at this point not to mention _friends_. Is it now _clear_ why I brought you back?"

Staring down at my food, I inhaled with a raised brow. "We need to find an alternative to the Commutare Corde or _whatever_ you did."

"I need the other part of my heart, and you now need a fully functioning one. Yes."

My appetite was gone, but I ate for the sake of needing some kind of energy other than coffee. This put the entirety of our current state of co-existence into perspective. I couldn't even call us symbiotic, because I was dependent on Saix's mercy. If he found a method that could harvest the other half of his heart and leave me to be picked over by the vultures, then I didn't doubt he'd do it. There was no other way to say it, but I was practically a dead man walking in more sense than one. That or a personified defibrillator.

"Don't look so ungrateful," he murmured. "You're alive and well enough."

It occurred to me that he had most definitely suffered more than I, but had never said a single word about it for fear of me judging him for doing drastic black magic. Whatever he'd thought while in the presence of my corpse was a private thing for him to deal with on his own, but it put my own arrogance and weakness into perspective. Because I'd died, which had been virtually painless, I'd spent years running away from my best friend and seeking out an impossible ideation of normality. Saix, on the other hand, had been burying his very real trauma as a way to keep the relationship between us as comfortable as possible. I was a massive inconvenience.

"I'm not ungrateful." Not anymore, at least. "A little pissed offf, but we'll figure this out."

"Oh, I'm sure we will. Anything so that you can have your own life." He forced more food onto my plate and muttered 'so thin' under his breath. "_Eat _something."


	2. The Fool

I wanted to post this on Friday the 13th, but I got caught up in my scary movies instead! While writing this junk I tend to listen to tons of CocoRosie. If you haven't given her a chance yet, then I highly recommend her work. 'Werewolf' and 'Gravediggress' are two good songs to start out with.

* * *

**Chapter Two: The Fool**

You see. I ran for a lot of reasons; security, meekness, anxieties. At the end of the day, though, it was mostly _weakness_. My exposure was no lesser or greater than Saix's. From the moment he'd been introduced to magic by his mother's guiding hand, so had I. Both of us were coddled to the same extent and set along the exact same path, but he'd _still_ managed to out nerve me to such an embarrassing extent I couldn't even make believe a reason for _why_ I'd thought I was so _right_. Something still burrowed into me like a determined corkscrew, promising me that leaving had been the only way to feel 'okay' again. But the longer I thought about it the more it became evident I had _never_ felt 'okay.' Maybe everything had been for nothing.

Even though Saix was directly in front of me, I repeatedly moved to scrape at my chest. The frantic beating reached toward my fingertips, and it dawned on me that I'd been carrying him around with me for much longer than I wanted to acknowledge. For someone who saw himself as barely humanoid on his worst days, my mind didn't easily wrap around abnormalities that defied scientific or anatomical logic. Such as possibly not having _any_ kind of heart and still being able to function as if all of my organs were intact. Full-fledged panic eroded away my delicacy, and within seconds, that 'fine' I'd been sputtering about dissipated and was replaced by the kind of implosion better left for celestial bodies.

"I'm going to shower."

Ignoring how I'd literally stepped out of the shower less than forty minutes ago, there was no way I could think quickly enough to come up with a better reason to leave Saix at the table. Though I promised to return and do the dishes, the words barely left my mouth before an abrupt bubbling in my lower abdomen shot up like an acidic geyser and forced me to lean over the kitchen sink. Curdled food that hadn't even thought to begin digesting jerked forward through my top and lower rows of teeth and spilt onto porcelain in beige chunks.

Saix jerked his index finger to point at me and the faucet suddenly blasted hot water while a towel floated toward me and hovered as if expectantly waiting for me to grab it. Still growing accustomed to things that levitated and freely roamed, once I was finished upchucking all of Saix's food, all I could do was stare at the towel. It proceeded to gingerly whack at my face as if to slap me. I soon caught the hint that my mouth was disgusting and I was stinking up the place. Saix said nothing, because there wasn't anything to say about my insultingly violent reaction to the idea of him inserting a piece of himself into me to keep me alive. I was thankful, I swear. But being more aware of how not human I was made my internal organs feel like a cottage cheese and lemon salad.

"Forget the shower," I said, panting and wiping my mouth clean as the rest of my vomit circled the drain. "How the _fuck_ are we going to get our hearts back?"

Saix leaned back in his chair and my stare focused on the tumultuous ocean that crashed down into climbing foam. I didn't shift my forearms from the rim of the sink and instead temporarily made myself comfortable. A long silence was reigning between us, and Saix's idea must've been big if he was hesitating to force-feed it to me. The old know-it-all had grown significantly humbler over the past five years, which wasn't saying much considering he still stank of superiority and certainty.

He finally cleared his throat and poured himself more coffee, this time stirring in the cream with his own hand and spoon. "How does homicide sound?"

Annoyed, but convinced he knew what he was talking about; I rolled my dried out lips together and parted them as if contemplating my next words. That took a minute. "Homicide it is, then."

**Memento Mori IV.**

"_You cannot expect me to go through that swampy forest." Saix spoke with such conviction I almost considered respecting his disinclination. "It rained last night. If I track mud into the house Mom will kill me and feed me to you for dinner."_

_ I was in the middle of taking off my shoes and tossing them over my shoulder when I finally figured out what to say. "It's like the town morgue."_

_ "Why would you say that to try and convince me? Remind me to remind you to never join the debate team," he murmured, plopping on his ass with a decided thud before also tugging off his shoes. I wasn't sure why he'd needed to sit down considering he had slip-ons, but Saix was practically impractical. "What's even interesting about dead bodies? All they do is rot and become a part of the Earth's energy. We shouldn't _value_ corpses."_

_ Good question. At fourteen I wasn't about to answer that with anything other than a 'they're cool,' which wouldn't have been enough for the oh-so mature Saix and his fully developed outlook on the human expiration date. I shot him an 'ugly face' with a curled bottom lip and finally shrugged as if that were a good enough answer. It was better than opening my mouth and giving him something to trump. He was gifted at undermining, and I was _not_._

_ A gust of cool autumn wind brushed through our hair and the forest behind his house groaned as if irritated that were going to bother walking inside. It was too old for the likes of us, but I was too stubborn to respect boundaries. Not only that, but I was playing into the the folly of youth's outlook on nature. I was human so everything was conquerable. That mindset was my greatest weakness and ultimately my undoing i.e. reason for retiring from magic._

_ "Larxene mentioned you in gym again." Saix did his best to mock her as we strode side-by-side through the mushy forest with bare feet. "She says your full name like you're a celebrity or something. 'Axel Nahundi,' she says over and over again. You're exotic to her. It's strange."_

_ Those last sentences made my skin ripple toward the nearest dark hole. "Only because I'm the only non-white person she's ever seen. Can we not talk about this? It makes my stomach feel like I'm about to wreck a sailboat and kill all of my men." _

_ The subject was settled, and we continued through forebodingly tall trees with looming branches that created a mangled canopy overhead. Every now and then pine rolled into my nostrils without an apology and cleansed my senses, but anything refreshing was dampened by the state of semi-darkness we were trapped in. No sunlight could break through the changing leaves, and whenever it did, the rays streamed toward the forest floor in short shots that seemed to guide us toward the designated area, which I only somewhat had a sense of direction for._

_ When we entered the thickets approximately a mile into shoe sucking terrain, Saix grasped onto my wrist and tugged me back without explanation. Prepared to make fun of him for holding onto me so tightly, I cast a look over my shoulder only to notice how he was staring off to our right with his lips parted in awe and a faint dampness collecting along the peak of his forehead. Prepared to comment on his demeanor, he shoved me down into greening mud and drug me through thorny shrubs that tore our cheeks and imbedded into the soles of our feet._

_ Wanting to ask what was going on, I opened my mouth, but Saix tossed his hand over my lips and didn't relent when I began furiously licking along his dirt-streaked palm. Right before I could scream against his fingers, he pointed forward and my gaze followed the line he'd created for me to follow. As soon as I did, I wished I'd never attempted to struggle in the first place and suddenly scooted back against his chest while staring with widened eyes, my spit settling on my chin as our breathing grew jointly shallow and close to non-existent. We would've suffocated each other if it had been the difference between being completely silent and not. _

_ There were ten people, an estimate, dressed in traditional black capirote and speaking amongst one another in low voices. On their robes was a sigil I'd never seen before and Saix apparently couldn't decipher what it meant either because his narrowed-in stare didn't drift once. It then became clear they were standing in front of an altar weaved together by the woods itself and there was an unconscious body laid out. Opening my mouth to whisper, Saix pressed his palm against me even harder and I began shaking my head when the male body levitated upward and the ends of his spine began to curl toward one another, becoming a perfect circle. _

_ Whoever the man was, he was alive and attempting to come to, but that was when the soothing chanting manifested and Saix and I _knew_. Panic set in, and I didn't want to be anywhere near that kind of ritualistic setting because the negative energies could haunt a person for the rest of his life. Knowing we couldn't run without possibly being caught and that I wanted to leave right then, Saix suddenly smacked his hand over my eyes only to bury his own face into the back of my neck as screaming and the crackling of ribs camouflaged our terrified panting. _

There's nothing fun about being a part of witchcraft when it's all you know. I'm aware that's an implicit fact about everything humans do with their lives. We're never content with consistency. Of course, the arcane nature of black magic not only holds a candle to just about everything else in the world, but drips wax into the eyes of anyone who doesn't take it seriously. Aside from the perverse misunderstandings that are both commonplace and annoying when it comes to approaching magic, there's also an element of denial magic folk continuously have to conquer. Magic is isolating, and it's always that way. Growing up and being Persian in a white-centric southern town had been infuriating on its own, but having a knack for casting spells only perpetuated the reality that I was so fucking different no one would want anything to do with me if it continued. People like Saix were able to make believe contentment while living that kind of lonely life. I couldn't even begin to comprehend the idea of growing even more uncomfortable in my own skin.

But there I was standing beside Saix with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of my mouth and fingers digging through my hair as he swiped the kitchen table clean of debris and unrolled a map of the very forest that created a dense barricade around Cape Bitterneck. The current map we had wasn't necessarily the most accessible. Many believed the forest had never been scouted enough to create a proper map nor had anyone bothered to pick up something via satellite, but it was the United States, so I wasn't sure exactly where that myth came from. It was probably because the woods weren't particularly user friendly. People didn't go there for vacation. People went there to hide things, which was exactly what we were scheming to do when the right time came.

"Isn't there like that method where you dig a deep hole, throw the body in, toss some dirt on the body and then put an animal corpse on top, so that if a search dog goes nuts and they start to dig, it'll just be an animal and the cops will stop looking there?" My words came out a little too informative, and Saix and I exchanged glances. He _almost_ looked impressed. "I said I like to read."

"I doubt we're going to need to do all of that," Saix grumbled and glanced out the kitchen backdoor that led into his glass atrium. "Considering this town's history, we should be able to dump the body in the backwoods and never think about it again. How many missing person's reports do you think go unsolved in this county annually?"

"Considering I don't recall a single person resurfacing once they fell off the grid, our town is on the brink of seeming a little _Murder, She Wrote_. Somehow everyone in the town dies or goes missing, but you don't see a lack of people." My index finger trailed along the densest area throughout the woods that were inked a wretched dark green. "We need to find the body bog we couldn't find as kids. I know it's real. There was so much talk about it among the adults when we were kids. It can't be small town lore."

"That's an unnecessary fixation." He stabbed a fork into the spot I was giving bedroom eyes. "We only need to find a sinkhole. Maybe a cave."

"What if I _want_ to be with my _kindred_?"

He never found me funny. "You're not _dead_."

Tell that to anyone who knew me for longer than a couple of weeks. There was always unsettling subtext associated with me. Mostly because of the way I could enter a room without bringing attention to myself, how my fingers were frigid from a lack of proper circulation and sometimes my filled-to-the-brim torso's cavity felt so emptied and layered with dust I wanted to deep throat a feather duster and swirl the cobwebs up and out. My gag reflexes weren't all that sensitive. It felt possible.

Saix nabbed my cigarette from the tortoise ashtray and pulled off his own drag, waiting for me to say something to negate the idea that I was alive, but I didn't bother humoring him. He wanted to bicker, and I wanted to get things moving. To accentuate my aversion, I stole my cigarette from him and ripped the fork out of the tabletop. A flood of uncomfortable nostalgia I was too frightened to linger on pulsated through my fingertips like an intentional burst of energy, and as we stared one another down, the back of my neck burned and heat trailed toward the tops of my ears.

"There are a lot of things I never wanted to do with my life." I leaned over and began circling possibilities on the map, using a purple ink pen. "Stealing people's hearts was a lesser known one, I think. But now it's at the top of the list."

"Life wouldn't be interesting if it were always _fair_."

I could've argued against that. Sort of like how 'money doesn't buy happiness.' But right then it was more or less my coming to terms with how we were going to be scouting for body dumping locations. I wasn't naïve enough to believe this was our _deus ex machine _where the sudden necessity to kill someone in hopes of becoming our normal selves again would bring us back together.

Once I'd scoured the sink free of my vomit with bleach and bare hands, which exasperated Saix because 'just use your fucking magic,' we dressed for winter hiking. There was someone in the woods cloaked in black, but it wasn't like the people we'd seen as children. I was certain the cloaked figure belonged to Saix. Whether or not it was a part of him left me unnerved, because it meant we weren't entirely alone in our ventures, and he wasn't going to acknowledge it to put anyone at ease. Civility was apparently too much effort for him.

"Do you remember that time we came out here as kids?"

Our booted feet, it was too cold to just shuck off the socks and shoes, trampled over dead vegetation and the rigid terrain that was beautiful only when thick summer air barreled over Cape Bitterneck. It had been years since I'd gone behind the Gibbous House and allowed myself to succumb to the antiquated trees that'd managed to grow even taller during my absence. Things were supposed to become smaller as a person aged, but the forest wasn't one of those things. My childhood naivety had been drowned and now I knew there were reasons to be afraid of dark places. Even though I wished I could, I wasn't able to blindly storm through the trunks with any enthusiasm. I could only imagine what it'd be like dragging bodies through the trees without being noticed by _something_.

"When we saw the coven, yes." Saix had tugged his hair back into a ponytail and for once wasn't dressed in layers that hid everything. The longer I took in his adult body the more it became apparent he could kick my ass if he wanted to. "I never thought to ask my mother about it before she died. It was the last thing on my mind, at the time. I do know what they were doing now."

"I'm not sure I want to know." That didn't mean I wasn't going to let him tell me, and I held back a branch so Saix wouldn't be smacked across the face. It was tempting to let go. "What was it?"

He continued walking, staring at the map in hand and thinking on my question. Birds that shouldn't have been there considering it was the dead of winter cawed to warn animals we were nearby, but aside from that, it was mostly silent. I reached out to drag my fingers along the hanging vines we'd tried to swing on as children only to fail miserably and end up beaten and bruised, and I blindly followed Saix. There were so many memories locked into the forest, and I didn't know how comfortable I was unlocking them. It was too Pandora's Box for my taste.

"I found the sigil in a book a few years ago, by chance."

"You know," I began, careful to pick my words. "You would've done really well at my school. You have a knack for research, languages and conceptual thinking."

"Don't switch topics," he said as his brow furrowed. "It was a cult for a demonic entity. I bookmarked the pages in my library, but it starts with an 'X,' and it's ancient, lethal and something we shouldn't have witnessed as children."

"I'm just _saying_ Brown University would slob on your knob, Saix. It's a compliment. Ivy League is a compliment for most people, _alright_?" Dropping the topic, I rolled my eyes to the side and didn't want to look at him. Instead, I shoved my hands into my back pockets and was tempted to use a small spurt of magic to tighten the scarf around his throat and hang _him_ from a barn's rafters. "So, it was only a cult then? That's not too big of a deal. Those happen all the time."

"And here I thought you'd grown up enough to no longer underestimate the pointedly lethal." I contemplated grabbing his fingers and breaking them when he accented his disenchantment with me by airily pushing strands of blue hair behind his ear. "I guess I was _wrong_ to have confidence in your maturity."

"You're a peach."

We trudged through the rough landscape. With not much to say about anything except which way we were going, a veil of silence floated on top of us like fallen silk and laid there without weight. Sometimes we came across a bluff where it looked as if we could possibly toss a body, but there was always a river beneath or some kind of trail nearby that would make it susceptible to being found. The caves were never big enough, sinkholes hardly deep enough and ponds too likely to dry up during the summer months. It wasn't until Saix 86'd a perfectly good sinkhole that I was positive would be perfect did I lose my cool and blow literal smoke out of my nostrils. Saix noticed my aggravation and quirked his eyebrow.

"You think I'm being picky, but I'd rather not be a part of a town witch hunt." He coolly breathed out the words, his icy breath floating like an apparition trying to manifest. "You know how they loved to point fingers at my mother for the simplest things. If the weather turned sour, then they assumed she was up to no good."

Remembering something, I laughed and pointed at Saix with a knowing stare. "I mean, there was that one time she did destroy an entire lot of flower gardens because one of them called her a 'creepy bitch.' Not saying what she did wasn't deserved, but you can't say she didn't fly some conspicuous curses here and there when we were kids."

"She had fun," Saix said and closed the map. "Do you want to keep going?"

"We don't have much of a choice."

Weirdly enough, the forest was tame considering I'd expected to feel watched, but that comfortable feeling didn't linger when Saix stopped in front of me and reached up for something. I assumed he'd found a species of moss he'd want to turn to powder and use in his apothecary kit, but I was _wrong_. Big surprise there. He tugged down a tied together clump of wood fashioned into a clumsy 'X,' and we both exchanged knowing expressions as he returned it to its original place on the branch.

This time I knew not to say anything. Saix motioned for me to continue forward where the crisscrossed pieces of carpentry hung like nature's chandelier, and with every step, the collection became denser. My fingers smoothly encircled Saix's wrist because the air had grown stagnant, the birds had ceased and not a single animal scurried overhead. I told myself things were hibernating, crawling around in the Deep South and our winters were notorious for their stillness, but it was becoming too unnatural for me to push away the possibility that we weren't in the safest of places.

I mouthed my next words. "Let's go back."

But he didn't feel half as threatened. "_No_."

My thumb pressed into Saix's pulse. The rhythm had flared along with my own, and only then I noticed how our pulses were perfectly timed. Not a millisecond separated the pumping, and it was a small dose of reality. As tempted as I was to comment on it, the harsh snap of a foreign foot on sticks forced me to inhale the self-awareness fog. Whatever had stepped out was no longer interested in keeping itself hidden from us, and Saix and I glanced at one another before reluctantly looking over our shoulders with purposely-muted expressions.

Cloaked just like from our childhood, a single entity stood far back in the forest, but he was stilly watching. Even though it was obvious we'd spotted him, he didn't find it particularly necessary to react as if we were a threat. Like a spider that runs toward its assailant, he began slowly striding in our direction. Long heavy footsteps crunched the Earth beneath his shoes, and it was then Saix ripped free from my wrist, smacked down on my hand and tugged me forward with his boots kicking up mud and sodden leaves. I wanted to look, because we'd stumbled across the _cult _again, which was a pertinent piece of my childhood.

"_Oh_!" I breathed out, pissed he hadn't just left in the first place like I'd wanted to. "I thought we were going to fucking say 'hello!' You sure seemed awfully fucking comfortable there!"

"Stop being argumentative and run!"

We darted through the bushy forest, tearing into the barbs and not looking back once we'd stared ahead. Whether or not whoever had been trampling toward us had given up the chase wasn't determinable until we'd run nearly a mile deeper into the woodlands. The only reason we knew he'd stopped pursing us was because Saix fell and dragged me down after him into a thick muck that was rancid. Before he could even say something he released a harsh growl of disapproval and began pushing something away from us with rapidly splashing palms. It wasn't just mud, we'd collapsed into deep water.

Trying to find my footing as I sloshed through rank mud, I rubbed at the hoop in my nostril with the back of my hand and attempted to hold back a sneeze, but the assaulting stench wasn't being merciful. Saix shushed me when said sneeze finally rained out of the back of my throat, and I cut him a disgruntled gaze and mouthed 'what' because he'd _shushed_ me for _sneezing_. The stench of rot was similar to methane gas hugging onto a slaughterhouse. It was misery.

"Well," Saix began as he treaded onward through knee high sludge. "Seems like we might've found your vile bog."

And to say he was right would've been an insult, because he was more than right. Floating away from us was a rotted through cadaver, and I burped on a scream because we were wading in icy rot. Not wanting to puke twice in one day, I covered my nose with the crook of my elbow and groaned in dismay. The dark water was surrounded by slanted low-hanging trees, dotted with heaps of tall grasses concealing God only knew what, and the tired shorelines were mostly mangled roots jutted upward like disappointed arteries.

"Fuck this place." I flicked out my hands and cold mud flung onto Saix's back. He noticeably stiffened. "Were you paying attention to how we got here?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, but while running from someone who had the capability of flipping my spine inside out I in fact _didn't_ pay attention to my surroundings." Shivering, Saix grasped onto a tree branch and tugged himself out so that he could take a seat on the elevated ledge that overlooked the stinking bog. "What a mess. All that organic decomposition and no one's reported this area before."

We watched the body bobbing past, wispy blond hairs barely connecting to its fleshy skull, and gazed out into the endless murkiness where other bodies floated in the distance. They were recent murders, so there was no telling what lay beneath the cloudy water. Finally, when Saix was no longer in the way, I yanked myself free from the shoe sucking mud that followed me with an unforgiveable _shloorp_. I made a face, not okay with it the place becoming even more disgusting, and made myself comfortable beside the other male. We were both on guard with tense shoulders and pursed lips. The both of us couldn't stop staring at the watery mass grave.

Saix noticed my chattering and used his magic to tug the water out of my pants and boots and redirect it to the bog. Soon after, he did the same for himself and stood up with a blue eyebrow creeping closer and closer to his hairline. The map in his back pocket was soaked and prepared to shred upon opening, but again, he used his magic to remediate the problem. Sometimes I had to admit my stubborn disregard for using anything related to magic was just me inconveniencing myself. It was almost as if I _wanted_ to make things harder, and for what? Pride.

Pride was a deadly sin for a reason, but I was already dead, so what was the point in entirely controlling myself? Bad reasoning, I know. Before I could rabbit hole myself into even deeper denial, Saix turned on his heel and began leading the way out of the forest as if he honestly knew where we were. Then again, getting lost in the United States (not counting Alaska) took some serious determination. Not only that, but the phone he'd kept in his jacket pocket had a compass, and that was all we needed in order to return to the seaside. From there we'd be able to find a way back to his house, shower and spend the night speculating.

"So, is this our dumping site?" I asked, jogging beside him.

"It seems so."

**Memento Mori V.**

_ Saix and I were standing outside the school cafeteria with Gatorades in hand and bored expressions on our oily mugs. It was Monday, and if you stood outside for too long either the heat or stench of rotting fish forced you to your knees. This was the worst time of the year for Cape Bitterneck. Not only was it when parents refused to let their kids sit inside where the AC blasted, but it was also when kids like Saix and I learned what Black Apparel Endurance truly meant. Even in the school building, the air could become sweltering, and I'd long since learned the importance of twenty layers of Old Spice and sitting with my legs spread wide open._

_ "Someone's screaming," I said, grinning while stepping to the side and peering into the lunchroom where people were abruptly standing. "Bet someone's fighting. It's not like anyone's going to get that excited about chicken nuggets."_

_ "You'd be surprised," Saix murmured and uncapped his purple Gatorade. _

_ "_Whoa_—that's not a fight."_

_ A horde of girls surrounding one girl in particular raced toward the heavy cafeteria doors. Not wanting to end as road kill, I stepped back to my original position beside Saix and kept on alert, but it didn't take long to figure out who was causing the commotion. Larxene's shrill crying could be heard the moment the doors were pushed open, and like a meerkat I perked up in alarm._

_ "I don't know what's fucking wrong!"_

_ "You're just sick, Larxene! It's okay! Calm down!" _

_ Sick wasn't the word. When the blonde and her swarm passed by, I watched with a gaping mouth as she slowly tugged off one of her fingernails. It pulled free like a rotted grape skin and only disconnected when the final thread of blood snapped with a sticky detachment. All of the other fingers on that particular hand were missing their nails, and as she walked, she left a trail of blood in her wake. Half tempted to go after her when it was evident she was heading toward the nurse's office, Saix grabbed my shirt._

_ "Don't," he snapped. "There's nothing you can do."_

_"She's sort of in my friend group." _

_ Saix pointedly stared at me. "After everything she's said about you?"_

_ He had me there, and I withdrew from my starting step. "That looked painful."_

_ "Because it _is_ painful."_

_ Licking my crackled top lip, something about the way he'd said that last sentence so passively, so knowingly, forced me to glance his way suspiciously. Knowing that I'd caught onto what he'd done, Saix flashed me the shortest of smiles that barely crept toward the corner of his mouth. It rapidly disappeared when I yanked his bottle of Gatorade out of his hand and drank down the rest of it even though I still had half a bottle of my own left. _

We kept our eyes peeled for a majority of the walk back to Saix's house, but when we heard the ocean's rolling waves it was clear we were all right for the time being. As soon as we reached the front porch and shucked off our boots, the front door creaked open and a mannequin with a wide-brim purple hat stood in the foyer, balancing a tray on her arms. On said tray sat a freshly prepared tea set, and there wasn't much I could say about the welcoming other than a light '_thanks_.' Whether or not the mannequin heard me was up in the air, but I took the cup of tea and followed after Saix who'd already started stirring two spoonfuls of sugar into his own. Along the rim was the lunar cycle. I couldn't get over how attached to the moon the entire Gibbous family made itself out to be.

It was midday by the time we were back at Saix's brunch table, and when I glanced out those same bay windows, I shivered. The cloaked person was standing in the middle of the backyard, but before I could comment, I spun around only to see the mannequin had followed us. Glancing toward Saix as if he was supposed to answer why on Earth she'd be following us through the house, he sighed.

"Take a biscuit, Axel."

He was treating me as if I should've known. "Oh…"

One handful of orange biscuits later, we were seated back down and I was lazily smoking, shivering and ready for a nap. If there was one thing Saix had never been able to stand about me, then it was how often I snoozed. Even if I'd be spending the night at his house and we were supposed to be playing the day away, I would conk out somewhere around mid-afternoon and sleep for about two hours. Beachside, bedroom, library; it didn't matter. Nothing he did could keep me awake. One time I caught him trying to enchant me into constant awareness. After I asked him if he couldn't handle living without me for a handful of hours it never happened again, but he still rolled his eyes at me whenever I'd lie down.

"So, are we going to go scout some kills?" I wasn't eager so much as I wanted to get it all over with. "Hit up a park and people watch?"

"Do you think people rehearse murders?"

I chewed and rolled my jaw while eyeing Saix. "I don't _think_ so."

"Maybe we should rehearse the murder."

"Saix, that's really _lame_ of you."

Suddenly, his brow furrowed in concern. "I don't want to kill more than one person to make this happen. I _really_ think we should _practice_."

"I mean," and I reached over to scratch my shoulder. "We'll just plan it extra careful so that nothing messes up."

Unconvinced, he took one of my biscuits. "But will that be _enough_?"

"Oh, totally. Unless you want to practice with one of your _mannequins_."

All at once, a looming silence shook the Gibbous House only to be followed by what felt like an actual earthquake, and I grasped onto the rattling plate between us. Saix lifted up his teacup and brought it to his lips only to snap his gaze toward the front room, which we had a clean shot into. Following his gaze, my mouth dried up as soon as I noticed what he'd caught onto. My skin crawled off my bones and hid beneath the chairs we were seated on, but Saix seemed composed.

Standing in the foyer was a group of mannequins that hadn't been there before. Still without an ounce of movement, not even a soft sway to their clothing, they hovered in the distance as if prepared to murder _me_. Swallowing the ashen mouthful of cookie I'd forgotten was even on my tongue, I pleadingly looked to Saix who was unmoved. In response, he poured himself more tea and the house ceased its shaking.

"Have fun sleeping tonight," he said coolly.

My nerves flared up. "No fucking way."

"If you had a better grasp on manners, then you wouldn't be in this predicament. Consider it a lesson."

"Go fuck yourself. It was a _joke_."

"And quite the joke it will be when you go to sleep."

Whether or not the mannequins were sentient was up for grabs. Half the time I was convinced Saix controlled them much like his mother had, but it was all in the air considering no one ever said anything about them. Groaning as I lulled my head to the side, I rubbed my high cheekbones and swallowed down spit. Meanwhile, Saix did nothing and seemed blissfully unaware of my growing discomfort.

"We'll go people watching tomorrow," I murmured into my hands.

"Sounds like an excellent plan."

As much as I wanted to go to my room and sleep, I knew there was no way I'd restfully snooze with a house full of mannequins furious with me. Instead, I waited for Saix to finish his miniature meal and followed after him toward the family library. When we were children we'd been forbidden to enter the space because it was the placeholder for dangerous artifacts. Shelves that made two of me in height were jam packed with books worth more than our lives. The special ones were kept in lit glass cases, but those were typically the books bound in human skin containing the surprisingly _least_ interesting information.

The space itself made up a massive portion of the back wing with dark lofted ceilings where portions of the constellations had been hand-painted and low hanging iron chandeliers indecisively swayed. Tucked away in the very end was a sprawling desk loaded with old papers and bookmarked grimoires. There was a brass model of the solar system and its major constellations to the right and an assortment of trinkets used for blatantly magical purposes opposite. Saix had apparently taken over his mother's old study because the high back chair had been refurbished and shined to look new enough.

I had my suspicions that the Gibbous family derived from a lesser known family from the Gilded Age, but that was only because the fireplace within the library was at least a hundred years old with carved white marble unlike anything I'd seen. Obviously, it was a piece of art, and the art nouveau tile scenery along the mantle had its roots in a very blue-toned Beauty and the Beast retelling. To date I'd never seen anything like it before, and I'd visited some very wealthy professors' houses. I could've just opened up my computer and done basic research on them, but something told me deep down I didn't want to know _too much_ about them.

"Doesn't it bother you that cult is still active?" I suddenly asked.

Saix sat down in his chair and the fireplace sparked to life as if on cue, but that was all me. There were no mannequins nearby, so I relaxed and plopped down in front of Saix with my legs crossed and fingers kneading at my thighs. The windows in the library were floor to ceiling, but the midnight blue drapes were closed, more than likely to keep peering eyes at bay. Saix was a private person.

"I always forget what you're majoring in." Saix wasn't going to answer my question. "I remember it was something absurd for a research university."

"Visual Art," I said, nodding as soon as he did with his sarcastic 'ah.'

"_That's right_. You're a Visual Art major in an Ivy League school."

There was something mocking about his wording, but I wasn't about to take it to_ heart _when he'd mocked institutionalized education from the time we'd met and onward. His mother had taught him that, so I tried to be tolerant, but he still made my stomach turn sour if he prodded at my decision to take a once in a lifetime opportunity. He'd had no say in the entire thing considering I'd accepted Brown's offer after we were no longer close, and it was obvious something about that didn't sit well with him.

"Not everyone has a massive trust fund to sleep on, Saix."

"Speaking of trust fund." He didn't miss a beat. What I'd said hadn't even made him turn red, and I had to wonder if he contained an iota of self-awareness. "Mother left you a few things. I figured you'd be back someday, and since we all left on such sad terms I doubted they'd hold much sentimental value to you."

My fingers twitched at the strike. "You know I loved your mom."

"She loved you, too."

An ornate Bible box suddenly dropped onto my lap with hard smack. It'd levitated overhead from behind me, so it was no wonder I jumped, but Saix only rolled his eyes at the reaction. My scowl followed his look, but it turned onto the box with its glass door that'd been neatly tied by Ms. Gibbous' own fingers right before she'd died. From what I'd heard, she'd been eaten alive by some kind of cancer, but knowing the kind of life she lived, it could've been a curse gone heinously wrong.

"I think she knew all along," Saix started as I opened the lid. "Near the end she often mentioned you and asked me to bring you home and make things right."

"There was no making us right again after what happened."

"Only because you were so quick to see it that way."

We exchanged solemn stares.

My attention returned to the box that contained a preserved sparrow's heart neatly set in a wearable jar. Holding the necklace up to the light, there was something humiliatingly sad about the entire situation. His mother had known. It made me wonder how we'd ventured into territory so massively unexplored and dangerous that not even one of the greatest witches of her time could remediate it. Saix had been her child. He'd butchered himself to bring me back for an idea I'd so eagerly pursued, but she'd never treated me as if I'd wronged her. Apparently, I'd even been in her final dying thoughts. The tar-like guilt was building up in my throat.

"Yeah, I think she knew."


End file.
